Class of 2020
Shannon Brinkley
My work addresses concerns of the body relating to mortality, violence, privacy, data, movement and personal biography. Seen in both the quiet and the onerous duration of this work, I point to concerns of practicality and futility. Inherent in daily life, these permeating references lean into ideas of effort, boundaries, repetition and error.
These human concerns expose existential questions: How much space do we take up? Who will notice when we’re gone? How do we measure a life? Intentionally vague and indeterminate, my work speaks to survival from
violence and the struggles of human mortality. The hand-crocheted nets, ambiguous gridded shadows, vignettes of pinhole footage, lopsided horizon lines and disintegrating cellular structures queue up questions about what has been omitted and unresolved. The mess left behind must speak for itself, frustrating any desire to have lingering questions answered.
Anderson Funk
The work is about play and opacity. and the work is opaque and playful. In it I apocalyptically uncover that the idea of "transparency" and "seriousness" are isolated forms of opacity and play.
The myths of consistency, individuals, narrative, are replaced with pleasant fracture, interdependence, splattered text and script.
The work is an exploration of self and of trust inspired by of Édouard Glissant’s opacity (poetics of relation) and Julio Cortázar’s insistence on play (autonauts of the cosmoroute), offering the phrase "ludic opacity" to describe an open mode of living and understanding life.
i am a man who was born in 1989 into a capitalist imperialist white supremacist patriarchy. i'm learning how to recognize the ways this makes my life less fun and more boring (transparent, basic), i'm learning how to relate to the multitudes of beings with honor, trust and respect, like i'm going to see them again, ya know.
Lauri Hafveinstein
Inextricably related to color, light makes human perception possible. It is the subject and material for this work, which is an investigation of how light activates space, both physically, and metaphysically. How is space transformed by the presence and intervention of light? What stories, dreams, and memories does it bring forth? What feelings are evoked?
Michelle Herman
There is always something happening in-between things. It’s never just you and it, but that space—that void—where meaning happens. We often speak of these poles as “subject” and “object,” but sometimes they switch parts. I’ve noticed that these holes are everywhere. I think about how to scoop them up and encapsulate them. What would I use? And when the spaces change shape and shift, would that tool be able to handle it? Or, like a mutated virus, would it be undetectable to the old tool? Would I then have to upgrade?
As humans, our abilities are full of holes. To compensate, we construct devices—often using technology or other proxies—to extend our limitations. But the space between where we aim and where we fall is a gap, too. One device we use to extend our limitations is language. Within this system of signification, there is an inherent “slipperiness” in which meaning becomes malleable. I am interested in the implications of this concept of meaning in relation to the production of our individual realities.
Nugent Koscielny
I am investigating how we affect and are affected by our environment through experiences filtered through biology/physiology, psychology, technology, and design. Our experiences within our world shape us and we then shape our world. Evidence is everywhere of the impact we make upon our ecologies and how these changes impact ourselves as social beings and our culture.
Liz Miller
This film catalogues the transformation of six public sites having notable ties to slavery or present day racism in the city of Baltimore. As performers move within these smoke-filled spaces, their black bodies adorned with hair sculptures, which function as sacred objects, they tap into the energy of our ancestors while simultaneously urging us toward an emancipated future: a freedom which comes from unlocking what’s embedded within and eschewing the traditional pathway of seeking freedom from the colonizer.
Each performer wears a handmade hair sculpture representing the power to transcend, cleanse, and heal. Through the ritual, the performer's DNA is deposited upon the pieces themselves,the headdresses transform from sculpture to artifact. the bond is sealed, and these spaces of historical trauma are cleansed.
Azul Nogueron
Mary Stuart Hall
One of my earliest memories is looking up at the sky and feeling overwhelmed by the vast expanse of space above me. The twinkling stars at some unfathomable distance away from me engendered an anxious wonder. Although this vague memory has been repeated through fragmented flashes in my mind’s eye since I was four years old, I can still conjure the feeling of looking into outer space with apprehension. I wasn’t the type of kid who reveled in the chance to be outdoors. My favorite memories usually included a playhouse or any structure I could get inside. The giant cardboard box that housed a new refrigerator sparked hours of play. I fantasized about how I wanted to build a house in my backyard. I thought through the specific logistics about how the structure would look and be constructed, exploring all of the nooks and crannies in my mind. The calming sense of safety that an interior space created was palpable even if it was imaginary.
